The everyday prevalence of telecommunications services, notably mobile services, has led civilian satellite operators to develop, on the basis of technologies that are compatible with the IP Internet protocol, such as GPRS technology or UMTS technology, new communications solutions for users situated aboard an aircraft. The communications transported over satellite networks are relayed on the ground to fixed and mobile public networks by way of terrestrial interconnection architectures intended for these uses. Civilian satellites are called on to play a significant role in aeronautics, as a supplement to terrestrial systems not only for maintenance and air traffic control services, so-called “cockpit” services intended for aircraft pilots, but also for the everyday services, so-called “cabin” services, intended for passengers.
To benefit from increased overall bandwidth and international coverage, the use of civilian satellite networks is envisaged to provide for communication services aboard aircraft.
One of the problems to be solved in this context relates to the secure interconnection between the satellite network and the terrestrial network. Indeed, within the framework of applications which require security of contents, it is necessary to authenticate the streams originating from or destined for the aircraft, to partition the data streams transmitted between the two networks, to protect them against intrusion or denial of services by ill-intentioned third parties and to ensure maximum availability of the transport solution for the streams.
Another problem resides in the monitoring of the overall operation of the end-to-end services in real time from a remote ground management centre in an effective and secure manner while circumventing systematic interrogation of the aircraft's facilities.
The existing offerings of services making it possible to send and to receive data or calls from or to an aircraft via a satellite linkup are implemented by so-called APN (“Access Point Name”) interconnection systems hooked up to the public data networks, in particular the Internet. These systems are shared between civilian users and users requiring a high degree of confidentiality. Interfaced with the public networks, they are accessible from the outside and are not protected against intrusion. The users' data streams are mixed with the service streams (management, signalling). They are not separated as a function of their sensitivity level nor of the degree of protection that they require. Thus a third party can, from a connection to the terrestrial network through the Internet or a switched telephone network, recover the data sent/received from the aircraft by accessing a management port for one of the facilities of the interconnection system or by encroaching into the network by usurping the identification of a satellite subscriber.
Thus the solutions of the prior art do not make it possible to provide the user and the operator with protection against intrusions, viruses or any form of outside attack nor to provide a guarantee of high service availability.
Moreover, no mechanism for real-time control of the satellite resources is implemented from the ground in the known solutions. The management of the resources is carried out in non-real time on the basis of the billing information provided a posteriori by the satellite operator.
The monitoring of end-to-end communications between the ground and the aircraft therefore requires the development on a case by case basis, directly on the means of satellite communication of aircraft, of dedicated applications which are periodically interrogated from the ground and during flights. This scheme comprises high risks of intrusion and of attack on aircraft and exhibits bandwidth constraints that are inherent when introducing management streams on the same satellite linkup as the data streams.